The Journey System: Core Stats

As you may have gathered, I'll be doing a little bit of planning and brainstorming for the Journey System throughout most of my upcoming posts. (Next week, actually, I may be doing a little bit of a gameplay report on the New World of Darkness campaign that I'm currently playing in.) This day being the "miscellaneous" day, I figured it was as good a day as ever to start talking about the "primary stats" of the game.

Starting Basic and Simple
A traditional way to represent characters is through the concepts of Body, Mind, and Soul: the body interacts physically with the world, the soul acts spiritually, and the mind blends and reconciles the two. This seems like a pretty decent way to encapsulate the entirety of a character. I'd even like to go a step further, and propose a little more elaboration on it.

Each of the three areas can be practically subdivided into two types: an aggressive, powerful type and a finessed, skill-based type. This is, in part, inspired by the principles of "hard" and "soft" martial arts techniques,. Overlaying this on Body, Mind, and Soul, we get six statistics. If you note, this is the same number of statistics found in the classic d20 system. They don't exactly match up, however.

• Strength [Body]
  
• Dexterity [Body]
  
• Craft [Mind]
  
• Wisdom [Mind]
  
• Passion [Soul]
  
• Belief [Soul]
  

A Little Elaboration
These words can go in many different directions, so I'll be describing my views on them in a little more detail. Some will be familiar...some may be a little new to you.

Strength
Not only is this your physical strength, but your raw physical ability. This is your ability to, through sheer physical power, withstand injury and perform tasks.

Dexterity
This is the trained use of the body. It doesn't have as much pure power to bring to bear, but it is incredibly efficient in its operation. Dexterity measures agility, grace, and speed.

Craft
This is the pure power of your intellect, your ability to solve problems, gather and apply information, think quickly and efficiently, and respond swiftly to a situation.

Wisdom
This is a far more intuitive aspect of the mind, the one which gathers information and seeks to understand what goes on behind the scenes. It is the empathic and emotionally connected aspect of the mind.

Passion
Potentially one of the most visible and dangerous aspects of the person, passion is what drives one to heights greater than they think possible. It is the raw drive and power of the soul.

Belief
Unguided, passion can lead down very dangerous roads. One's Belief in something is the main way in which the passions can be tempered. It is a structured organization of the soul's drive, in service of a higher purpose.

A Distinctive Approach
Something that I think is very important to have in this game is a distinctive feel to each of the core abilities. Now, this will probably take a lot of work, but I'll be working to flesh it out as best as possible. I really do want to make sure that they feel differently. And yes, I'll be fleshing out each of these, I'm sure, with posts in the future. What I'm really excited about, though, is the incorporation of Wyrd.